Researchers Assess Meteorological Disasters in Xinjiang of Northwest China based on Information Diffusion Theory

Since the late Quaternary, Xinjiang in Northwest China has been characterized by a drought climate. During the past 50 years, under the scenarios of global climate change Xinjiang, as many parts of the world, has experienced the rising temperature and non-uniform precipitation. At the same time, the frequency and intensity of meteorological disasters such as wind, hailstorm, extreme temperature and drought have also risen. The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events will have serious consequences on the economy and agricultural production of Xinjiang. Environmental suitability, ecological stability and recovery ability are crucial for arid agricultural production, and thus it is essential to estimate the risk of the main meteorological disasters.

Using the meteorological disaster, hydrological and statistical data, and then based on information diffusion theory, WU Meihua et al. assess meteorological disaster risk in Xinjiang. Furthermore, by applying the Morlet wavelet method they analyze the disaster oscillation period and calculate the correlation coefficients between the affected areas and economic indexes.

The results indicated that the frequency and intensity of meteorological disasters of the study area represented an increasing trend associated with global warming. Among the four types of disasters, surpass probability of drought was the largest, followed by hailstorm, low temperature and flood in turn. Moreover, the greater oscillations had occurred since 2000 with the occurrence of extreme climatic changes. The spatial distribution of disaster frequencies showed that the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains is a multiple disaster area, the southern slope of Tianshan Mountains has more flood and hailstorm occurrences, and the west of Turpan-Hami Basin is an area with prevalent wind.

The results also revealed that the increasing population and economic development in Xinjiang have caused changes in land cover and water resources and damage to the ecological environment. Under climate change, human being could better deal with the uncertainty of future climate changes by controlling population growth, along with rationally planning and utilizing water and land resources, and protecting and restoring the ecological environment. The study was published in Journal of Geographical Sciences in February 2015.

Contact

Corresponding author: CHEN Yaning

State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences

E-mail: chenyn@ms.xjb.ac.cn